Flash Fiction: Beloved

The man in the leather jacket was on the evening news. The helicopter camera got a good picture of him, standing on the fenced walkway, firing arrow after arrow from a recurve bow into traffic below.

“Ed,” he said, when police handcuffed him, and asked his name. “Just Ed. Y’know, like Madonna.”

No one went to the hospital reporting an arrow injury that day, but there were a lot of marriage proposals in the weeks to come. And when police opened Ed’s cell the next morning, all they found was a giant heart drawn on the cell wall in sharpie.